ST. PETERSBURG- Innovation meets medicine as Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital acquires a 3D printer.
Whether it’s a heart, a brain, muscles, or bones, Medical director of the hospital’s simulation program, Dr. Jennifer Arnold says printing a child’s specific anatomy is just a scratch on the surface of what their new technology can do.
“It can print, in one fell swoop, materials that have different densities,” said Dr. Arnold. “So solid with soft and squishy. That’s not common with many printers. As printing technology is improving in healthcare, we’re seeing that it becomes much easier to create and recreate a realistic patient’s anatomy.”
While imaging is still critical to a patient’s care plan, the printer now offers doctors to get hands-on skills.
“So we could print out a skull with the brain, with the tumor in it,” said Dr. Arnold. “A surgeon can actually practice dissecting and removing that child’s tumor before they actually operate on that child. This, with the intent of identifying potential complications that they would not otherwise be able to see on a 2D image like a CT or MRI scan. Now they are able to identify those and troubleshoot them before they are in the OR with that patient.”
Aside from training, the printer also allows parents and caretakers to get an inside look at their child’s diagnosis.
“It could be a tumor, it could just be a complex structure or a different heart, and so we can actually show that and allow parents to understand by holding their child’s heart in their hands,” said Dr. Arnold.
Dr. Arnold says each of the printer’s benefits allows for safer procedures and ultimately better patient outcomes.
